Mexican immigrants in the U.S.: a profile of a huge presence

The Pew Hispanic Center published an analysis of Mexican immigrants in the U.S. Mexicans make up the largest share (32%) of all nationalities among immigrant roles. They comprise 5.7 legal and 7.0 illegal immigrants. In 1970, 1.4% of Mexico’s population lived in the U.S. Today 11% do. I have data elsewhere reporting that one out of six adult male Mexicans live in the U.S. The report notes that in the 19th Century, Irish and then Germans, in different decades, made up about a third of all immigrants.
Here is a summary of the report:
The number of Mexicans living in the U.S. is very large from Mexico’s perspective, too. About 11% of everyone born in Mexico is currently living in the U.S. This large-scale
transfer of population has taken place fairly quickly in demographic terms. As of 1970, 760,000 Mexican immigrants, or 1.4% of Mexico’s population, lived in the U.S. And in 1960, Mexico ranked seventh as a source of immigrants to the U.S., behind Italy, Germany, Canada, the Soviet Union, the United Kingdom and Poland.

Large-scale settlement in the U.S. by Mexicans began in earnest in the 1970s. By 1980, Mexico had the largest foreign- born population here with 2.2 million, or more than twice the second-place country (Germany at 850,000). The number of Mexicans immigrants to the U.S. doubled from 1980 to 1990 and more than doubled from 1990 to 2000.
While the growth rate of the Mexican immigrant population has slowed considerably since 2006, the total number reached a record 12.7 million in 2008, or almost 17 times the number in 1970. Mexicans make up the largest number of undocumented immigrants in the U.S. (7.0 million, or 59%) as well as the largest number of legal immigrants (5.7 million, or 21%).
The current Mexican share of all foreign born living in the U.S.— 32%—is the highest concentration of immigrants to the U.S. from a single country since the late 19th century. But it is not unprecedented. Irish immigrants represented a third or more of the immigrant population from 1850 to 1870. Germans were 26% to 30% of the foreign-born population from 1850 to 1900.
As a group, Mexican immigrants are younger than either other immigrants or the
U.S.-born population. A higher percentage of them are male than either of the other group, and they are more likely to be married. They are less likely to be U.S. citizens than other immigrants, in part because they are more likely to be unauthorized. Mexicans have lower levels of education, lower incomes, larger households and higher poverty rates than other groups (Tables 1-2). They are slightly more likely to be in the labor force, where they are more likely to work in lower-skilled occupations; they currently have a higher unemployment rate than other immigrants or U.S.-born workers (Table 3).

This entry was posted
on Wednesday, April 15th, 2009 at 5:45 pm and is filed under Demographics.
You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.
Both comments and pings are currently closed.